Sky Alland Furthers Shift to Multichannel Approach

Sky Alland, Columbia, MD, has transformed its Laurel, MD, call center into a multichannel communications center, in which each workstation is equipped to handle e-mail, fax, Internet telephony, Web chat and data collection, along with traditional inbound and outbound calls.

Three clients - an automotive company, a high-tech company and an e-commerce company - have signed on to use the new approach. The company has already scheduled its Wisconsin call center to be transformed to the new system in the fourth quarter and its Indiana center to be refitted in the first quarter 2000.

Company President/CEO Rich Hebert said the company decided multichannel stations, as opposed to different groups dedicated to each type of media, would better suit clients shifting to new media interaction.

"Many clients don't have enough volume over each type of group to justify dedicated groups for each type of media," he said. "They wanted dedicated groups to handle all features."

The new system, which will store interactions from all media into customer profiles, was created using an information management system built on Oracle's 8iTM platform, IMA's Edge customer interaction software and Lucent CentreVu Internet Solutions.

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